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Stuff Friday December 21, 2007, 3 comments

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”
-Victor Lebow

Comments

There’s an aesthetic that we can cultivate that makes this much easier to accomplish (“this” being a gross oversimplification of quite a bit of work). What’s more fun: going to a mall to sift through all the shiny new designs; or going to a garage sale or Craig’s List or Goodwill or the Salvation Army or other second-hand shops, and finding a treasure hidden among the detritus?

I was floored that I found the computer I currently use at home on Craig’s List for US$45. It’s not a screamer, but I don’t need it to be. I run an OS and use programs that aren’t bloated. I have some other gear I’ve scrounged from work, meaning they don’t go into landfills and I’m not buying new stuff.

Still, I guess that’s only part of the solution. Switching heroin for nicotine is an improvement, but you’re still addicted and still harming your body. Honestly, I’m very tempted to think that the species should have practiced, and should be practicing, population control. As our population grew, we scaled our means of production, of food and the necessities of life. The scaling seems to have come with a redefinition of “necessity,” and this might be attributable to the dynamics of scaling. Consider: newspapers have to have news to sell issues to generate operating capital, and so during slow news times, they must find, exaggerate, and/or create news. It’s sort of like a metabolism that needs to be fed. The machinery needed to provide for hundreds of millions of citizens has to run constantly to achieve efficiency, so during lulls of demand, demand must be created.

Now, this is a little hypocritical; I have a pretty large family, so maybe I could’ve practiced population control locally. But five of my six kids are “recycled” from other relationships, so maybe it’s not as hypocritical as it might seem.

You’ll have to explain ‘recycled’ kids to me Daniel. Not entirely sure I’ve grasped the concept.

I am a firm believer in the ‘think globally, act locally’ tennet. It’s something I am trying to do (says the guy who just got a new laptop). It’s not always easy, but I am trying to make 2008 a year of less consumption.

I’m not a particulary avid consumer, but I am going to try, nonetheless, to consume less. Along with this comes a bonus: less consumption costs less.

Less consumption means fewer things to move out of your way on through the house, too. I mean, sheesh.

Three of my kids are the product of my first wife’s first marriage, one a product of my first wife’s marriage to me, and two a product of my second wife’s first marriage. This is how I can say something about population control without being too much a hypocrite: I didn’t make all my kids; I gathered several who were already made, and added one from my genes.

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A Rain of Frogs is written, designed and built by Adrian Lebar, a twenty(!) year veteran of web design and development. He is currently managing web and mobile development teams at Canada’s largest and most beloved classifieds site, Kijiji!